Tag Archives: police

The Met Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards has knocked back my appeal against the refusal of the police to investigate Piers Morgan’s illegal receipt of information from one or more police officers – see the email below the one to Anne Owers. Below that is the ongoing correspondence with the IPCC.

The refusal is based on the usual guff about the matter having been previously investigated when it has never been investigated. I have now referred the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) . In terms of officialdom that is as far as I can go because I have exhausted all other channels.

For previous posts on this subject click on the tag Operation Elveden

Robert Henderson

———————————————————————————————————-

Dame Anne Owers

Chair

Independent Police Complaints Commission

PO Box 473

Sale

M33 0BW

8 July 2014

Dear Dame Anne,

On 21 January 2013 I passed to Operation Elveden clear evidence of serious criminality involving the Daily Mirror newspaper and one or more Metropolitan Police officers. The criminality consisted of the then editor of the Mirror Piers Morgan and the paper’s then chief crime correspondent Jeff Edwards receiving information illegally from one or more Metropolitan Police officers and their subsequently perjury before the Leveson Inquiry.

I appended to these reports of crime a further complaint against a senior Scotland Yard officer, Det Supt Jeff Curtis, who had years before failed to investigate, despite having been given the strongest evidence possible, namely, a letter from Piers Morgan to the PCC in which Morgan admitted receiving the information in circumstances which can only have been illegal, viz: “The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect”.( A copy of that letter in facsimile is attached. You will need to load it into an Adobe Reader). I was the subject of the information illegally received by the Mirror.

You will also find enclosed my complete correspondence with variously Operation Elveden, the DPP and other staff at the CPS and the Met Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards. This correspondence is divided between those three categories and within each category the documents run from the earliest to the latest in descending order.

The most efficient way to read yourself into the matter is to read the first document down which is my original submission to the then head of Operation Eleveden, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh.

As you work through the correspondence you will encounter the same absurdity over and over again: I keep being told that the matter has already been investigated and found to be unsubstantiated. This is simply false. The original officer Jeff Curtis failed to investigate and no one since I made the complaint to Operation has done so. Yes, that is right, despite having the letter from Piers Morgan, neither Morgan or anyone else at the Mirror has ever been interviewed or any examination of the Mirror’s records been made to see if there was evidence of payment being made for the information. A very telling fact is, as you will see from the enclosed correspondence, the blanket refusal of the police to meet me to take a formal statement, despite my persistent requests that they do so. It is reasonable to interpret that strange reluctance as a cynical device to avoid having to justify their failure to act to my face.

Throughout I have met with the same corrupt refusal to investigate that the many victims of sexual abuse have experienced. The simple truth is that where those with power, wealth and influence are involved neither the police nor the prosecuting authorities will investigate properly or at all if they can possibly help it. Such refusals amount to both misconduct in public office of the grossest kind and an unambiguous perversion of the course of justice.

The story I have to tell should come as no surprise to you. In March of this year you made this statement in a radio interview “Police officers that come to us appear all too often like sulky teenagers and won’t say anything in interviews. I and the public find it very difficult to understand how a police officer, who is a professional, doesn’t want to cooperate with an inquiry as a witness to what happened, why it happened and how something like that can be prevented in future.”

I have exhausted all other avenues, both informal and formal. Consequently, I ask you to take up my complaints to (1) ensure that those within the police who have refused to investigate the cast-iron evidence of criminality I have provided are disciplined and (2) ensure that an honest and complete investigation into my complaints is made.

We are in who shall guard the guards? territory here, Dame Anne.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

Cc

Rachel Cerfontyne (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Sarah Green (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner)

Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner)

Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner)

James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner)

Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner)

Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner)

Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner)

Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner)

Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive)

Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary)

Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General)

Alison Saunders (DPP)

G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division)

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner)

DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS)

DCI Tim Neligan (DPS)

CI Andy Dunn (DPS)

Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden)

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden)

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

Sir Gerald Howarth MP

Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit

———————————————————————–

Metropolitan Police

Directorate of Professional Standards

Prevention and Organisational Learning Command

DPS Appeals Unit

22nd Floor

Empress State Building

Empress Approach

Lillie Road

London

SW6 1TR

E-Mail: Appeals@met.pnn.police.uk

Our reference: PC/00455/14

Date: 19th June 2014

Dear Mr Henderson

This letter is about your appeal against the outcome of your complaint against police received on 5th December 2013. Your complaint was dealt with in two parts. Firstly, you received an ‘outcome of investigation’ report from DCI Neligan, detailing your complaints about DI Smith. Additionally, your complaint concerning retired Detective Superintendent Curtis was subject of something called a ‘disapplication’. You appealed against the outcome of the investigation, in your appeal email dated 6th April 2014. Upon receipt of a further letter dated 16th April 2014, informing you of the decision to disapply the latter part (against Mr Curtis) you submitted a further email of appeal, dated 27th April 2014. Both aspects of your appeal will be discussed and addressed in this letter.

1. Appeal against Investigation

In answer to the first part of your appeal (investigation), the Metropolitan Police Appeals Team’s role in the appeal process is to review the investigation into your complaint, not to re-investigate your complaint. This appeal outcome is completed on behalf of Superintendent Sarti, with delegated authority for dealing with Appeals on behalf of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.

Our decision on your appeal is linked to paragraph 25 of Schedule 3 of the Police Reform Act 2002. I have looked at the following issues in concluding your appeal:

·Whether the findings of the investigation need to be reconsidered

·Whether the outcomes, for example in relation to whether any disciplinary or other actions should be taken, are appropriate

·Whether you received adequate information about the findings of the investigation

I have reviewed your email of complaint dated 5th December 2013, addressed to the Commissioner. You complaint was recorded on 8th January 2014.

The decisions I have reached in relation to your appeal are outlined below:

1.Are the findings of the police investigation appropriate/ proportionate to the complaint?

Your heads of complaint have been obtained from the following:

Your email of 5th December 2013 and accompanying attachments/email string

Your complaint was about the decision by Detective Inspector Daniel Smith, and his refusal to investigate three allegations of crime concerning Mr Piers Morgan and Mr Jeff Edwards, repeated below;

1. That Piers Morgan when editor of the Mirror obtained information from a Met Officer(s) in circumstances which can only have been illegal. The letter from Morgan to the PCC which I have supplied to Elveden and which you have a copy of in facsimile conclusively proves this.

2. That Jeff Edwards when chief crime reporter for the Daily Mirror illegally received information from Met Officer(s). Morgan’s letter plus the story printed by the Daily Mirror about me conclusively prove Edwards received such information.

3. That both Morgan and Edwards committed perjury when questioned under oath about receiving information illegally from the police. I provided Operation Elveden with the relevant Leveson transcripts.

In his response to your allegations of crime, DI Daniel Smith responded;

Dear Mr. Henderson,

I write in relation to the allegations you made following your contact with DC Rooke in January of this year. I have reviewed the matters raised by you in this, and subsequent communications, with DC Rooke.

I understand that the matters raised by you relate to an article published in 1997 and that the matter was investigated by the Metropolitan Police Service (Complaints Investigation Bureau). The matter was referred to the Police Complaints Authority in 1999.

I understand that there is no new evidence or information available and as a result I have decided that no investigation will be conducted into the points raised by you.

In relation to the Perjury allegation, having read the transcripts provided, I do not believe there is evidence that shows an offence has been committed. As a consequence this allegation will not be investigated.

Yours sincerely,

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith

Complaint Versus Criminal investigation

DCI Neligan was appointed to investigate your public complaint about DI Smith’s decision, not to investigate the criminal allegations about Mr Morgan and Mr Edwards. That is an important point to differentiate because in your email of appeal you appear to be confusing the two issues.

In the outcome letter sent to you, dated 10th March 2013, DCI Neligan has identified your complaint and the steps taken to investigate it. I therefore consider that a proportionate investigation has been carried out.

I have considered your grounds for appeal, as set out in your email dated 6th April 2014.

Point 1, you have appealed on the basis that you have not been interviewed personally by the Investigating Officers, either of the criminal investigation, or the complaint investigation. In my considerations, I have looked at the email strings you have submitted. The details of the criminal allegations are comprehensive and sufficiently detailed upon which DI Smith based his initial assessment in terms of the criminal allegations. Likewise, there is sufficient detail upon which DCI Neligan can base his assessment of his complaint investigation and therefore I do not consider it necessary to interview you at any stage up to those reviews being conducted.

In terms of the criminal investigation, DI Smith had articulated his rationale for not investigating your first 2 criminal allegations (that they were already investigated by the PCA in 1999) as there is no new evidence; there was no merit in further investigation of those allegations. The third allegation, (perjury), was subject to a preliminary review, as DI Smith explained, when he reviewed the transcripts. His assessment was that there is no evidence of the offence of perjury having been made out. Consequently, that allegation would not be further investigated.

In his report, DCI Neligan has elaborated upon these points and provided you with additional information in terms of the police obligations under National Crime Recording Standards as well as the MPS Crime Management Policy.

Point 2, you believe the findings of DCI Neligan’s investigation “are absurd because of the Morgan letter alone, but the Mirror story and Curtis’s failure to investigate Morgan, Edwards and the Mirror generally make them doubly ridiculous.”

I mentioned above, the difference between DI smith’s investigation and DCI Neligan’s, but following on from Point 2 above, it is important to make absolutely clear, the role difference between the two investigations.

DI Smith was asked to investigate your criminal allegations. You disagreed with his decisions and have made a public complaint about DI Smith. DCI Neligan was appointed to and has, investigated the complaint about DI Smith. DCI Neligan has not investigated your criminal allegations about Morgan and Edwards. However, in conducting his investigation, DCI Neligan has looked at the actions/decisions made by DI Smith when looking at the investigation of Morgan and Edwards.

I find the steps taken by DCI Neligan, in examining the actions of DI smith, to be proportionate and reasonable.

Point 3, I similarly refer to the response to point 2 above.

Point 4, DCI Neligan is being asked to consider if DI Smith has committed a criminal offence, by his (Smith) not investigating your criminal allegations any further. DCI Neligan has concluded that the actions of DI Smith are correct and therefore there are no criminal actions for the CPS to consider. I concur with that rationale.

On the basis of this assessment the conclusion reached by the Investigating Officer, DCI Neligan is appropriate. I do not uphold your appeal.

2.Is the decision that the police have made about whether an officer has a case to answer for misconduct appropriate?

Yes. The outcome of the Investigation is appropriate and the Investigating Officer has concluded there is insufficient evidence to prove a case of misconduct against DI Smith. I do not uphold your appeal.

3.Are the force’s proposed actions following the investigation adequate?

Yes. The Investigation has not found a case to answer and no action has been proposed. I do not uphold your appeal.

4.Have you been provided with adequate information following the investigation of your complaint?

Yes. The original report by DCI Neligan addresses all of the complaints submitted by you, the rationale behind the conclusions reached, and includes your right to appeal. I do not uphold your appeal.

5.Has the investigation been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)? If not, is this decision appropriate?

The report has not been referred to the CPS. I consider this decision to be appropriate as the investigation and the underlying evidence does not indicate that a criminal offence has been made out. I refer to my assessment under Point 4 above. I do not uphold your appeal.

After considering all the information available I have now made a decision about your appeal against the outcome of the investigation.I have not upheld your appeal.

You are not able to appeal against the assessment of your appeal. If you have any questions or need more information about the appeal decision please contact me using the details shown at the top of this letter.

2. Appeal against Disapplication

I will now respond to your other appeal, against the decision to disapply the requirements of Schedule 3 Police Reform Act 2002 to your complaint about ex-DSU Jeff Curtis. Your appeal was received on 27th April 2014. An appeal may be made to the relevant appeal body against a decision to disapply the requirements of Schedule 3 of the Police Reform Act 2002. The Chief Officer (where they are the relevant appeal body) must determine whether the decision to disapply those requirements should have been taken. This appeal outcome is completed on behalf of Detective Superintendent Sarti, with delegated authority for dealing with Appeals on behalf of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service

In determining your appeal, I must consider the following points ;

Has the complaint been, or should it have been, referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)?

The complaint about retired Detective Superintendent Curtis concerned his alleged conduct in 2003 and specifically, that he deliberately failed to investigate your original allegations against Mr Morgan & Mr Edwards despite promises made to you in a telephone conversation. Such a complaint does not meet the criteria for a mandatory referral to the IPCC, nor was it so referred (to the IPCC). The Relevant Appeal Body is therefore the Force itself.

Was the decision to disapply made with the permission of the IPCC?

No. The complaint was not referred and did not require referral to the IPCC. Therefore, permission to disapply was not required from the IPCC.

Was the complainant offered the opportunity to make representations before the decision to disapply was made and if any representations were provided, were these taken into account in making the decision to disapply?

Yes. Within the Outcome of Investigation report, dated 10th March 2014, included a request for you to provide reasons why your complaint concerning ex-DSU Jeff Curtis ought not to be disapplied on the basis that it was ‘out of time’ i.e. More than 12 months have elapsed between the date of the incident complained of and the making of the complaint, and no good reasons could be shown for that delay.

You responded in your email of 6th April 2014, and those responses were considered by Chief Inspector Dunn who decided there were no good reasons for the delay of over 12 years in the making of the complaint. I accept that you had previously reported the matters originally to the Police Complaints Authority who had ‘rejected them’.

After considering your email of appeal, dated 27th April 2014, I consider the decision to disapply your complaint was appropriate. The incident complained of was more than 12 months before the complaint was made and no good reason for that delay has been demonstrated. Your appeal is not upheld.

Actions required of the MPS

The MPS will take no further action regarding your complaints or the appeals. You are not able to appeal the outcome of this appeal assessment. No further right of appeal exists with the IPCC. If you disagree with this appeal assessment, you are advised to seek independent legal advice.

Yours sincerely

David Corbet

Inspector

Appeals Unit

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!enquiries Jul 10 at 4:27 PM

To

‘anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk’

Dear Mr Henderson

Thank you for your email of 8 July 2013.

I note that the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) have finalised the complaints that you made. You were provided with a right of appeal to the DPS Appeals Panel which you exercised. You were provided with the outcome of this appeal in an email dated 16 June 2014.

In this case, the IPCC is not able to take any action in relation to your appeal. The IPCC can only act as an appeals body in cases where we are named as the relevant appeal body. I have attached a Frequently Asked Questions sheet which explains how the relevant appeal body is decided upon.

The only avenue left open to you in terms of challenging the decision of the DPS Appeals Panel is judicial review. I appreciate that this is not the response that you were seeking from the IPCC, but I am unable to advise you any differently.

(yes, all 135 pages of it, an absurdly long and densely written document which is intended for the guidance of the ordinary person) I found this:

Appeals

1.27 Chief officers now have responsibility for handling certain appeals. All appeals about the recording of complaints will continue to be dealt with by the IPCC. The IPCC will also deal with any appeal concerning a complaint about the conduct of a senior officer or complaints that have been or must be referred to the IPCC.

Please explain to me how my complaints about senior officers do not necessitate their referral to the IPCC.

The appropriate authority must refer complaints and conduct matters involving:

serious corruption

complaints or conduct matters which are alleged to have arisen from the same incident as anything falling within these criteria

Please explain to me why my complaints do not fall within these categories, especially that of serious corruption.

Let me remind you exactly how serious and extensive are the complaints I have made against the police. I provided Operation Elveden with a letter to the PCC from Piers Morgan when he was editor of the Daily Mirror – you should already have a copy of that letter in facsimile, but I attach a copy to this email. In that letter Morgan admits that he received information (about me) from a Met Police officer in circumstances which can only have been illegal, viz: ““The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect)…”

That letter alone would have been enough to charge Morgan and the Mirror’s then Chief Crime Reporter Jeff Edwards with criminal offences. In addition, there was also the evidence of a Mirror story which corroborated the Morgan letter. A copy of that Mirror story was supplied to Operation Elveden.

The officer who dealt with my original complaint, Det Supt Jeff Curtis of Scotland Yard, promised me that he would interview Morgan and Edwards then failed to do so. I supplied Operation Eleveden with a tape recording of Curtis making the promise. No contact with the Mirror was made. This meant that not only was no investigation made of the certain offences resulting from the admitted illegal receipt of information in Morgan’s letter, but no investigation of the possibility of the information having been purchased was made. It is probable that the information was purchased by the Mirror. All of that constituted a clear misconduct in a public office and a perversion of the course of justice by Curtis.

My complaint to Operation Elveden has met with the same wilful neglect of my allegations of serious crimes that Curtis displayed. Every person who has dealt with my complaint from Operation Elveden’s receipt of it to the rejection of my appeal has, by ignoring the cast iron evidence of Morgan’s letter to the PCC, committed the crimes of misconduct in a public office and a perversion of the course of justice. These people are:

1. Operation Elveden

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh

Commander Neil Basu

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith

2. Metropolitan Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS)

Det Chief Superintendant Alaric Bonthron

Chief Inspector Andy Dunn

Det Chief Inspector Tim Neligan

Inspector David Corbet

I have also kept Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe fully informed of the nature and treatment of my complaints.

I want every one of these people investigated.

A very telling fact about my complaints to Operation Eleveden and the DPS is that, despite my numerous requests to do so, I have been unable to meet with any police officer handling the case. That can only be explained by the facts of the case putting the persistent refusal to investigate beyond any reasonable explanation. Everyone involved knows I have given them an open and shut conviction.

I ask that I meet with someone senior from the IPCC, preferably Anne Owers.

There is a sinister absurdity in the position you are claiming for the IPCC. Iin effect you are saying that if a police force refuses to address a complaint honestly and does not refer it to the IPCC, then nothing can be done because the IPCC can only take cases which are referred to them. In short, the police can get rid of any complaint, no matter how serious, simply by refusing to record or refer it to the IPCC. Do you dispute my interpretation of the situation?

Your suggestion that judicial review could apply is frankly adding insult to injury because there are very few people who could afford such a hideously expensive legal action. It is the equivalent to telling a poor man that the Ritz is open to all.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

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IPCC ref: 2014/030525

!enquiries Today at 3:19 PM (21 July 2014)

To

‘robert henderson’

Dear Mr Henderson

Thank you for your email of 17 July 2014.

While I appreciate that you are unhappy that there is no avenue of appeal to the IPCC, I am unable to advise you any differently.

It is also significant that your allegation of corruption with regard to an unknown police officer passing information to the Daily Mirror was referred to the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) in 1999. The IPCC is not able to deal with matters which were dealt with by the PCA.

However, I note that your email contains allegations about a number of officers within the Metropolitan Police which have not been made in your earlier complaint. Therefore, I have forwarded your email on to the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) so that these matters can be considered as a new complaint.

Further to my earlier email, I write to confirm that I have forwarded your email to the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS). It is now their responsibility to assess the new allegations you have made.

Please find attached a Frequently Asked Questions sheet which may be of some use.

27 Chief officers now have responsibility for handling certain appeals. All appeals about the recording of complaints will continue to be dealt with by the IPCC. The IPCC will also deal with any appeal concerning a complaint about the conduct of a senior officer or complaints that have been or must be referred to the IPCC.

Please explain to me how my complaints about senior officers do not necessitate their referral to the IPCC.

The IPCC Mandatory referral criteria contains this

The appropriate authority must refer complaints and conduct matters involving:

serious corruption

complaints or conduct matters which are alleged to have arisen from the same incident as anything falling within these criteria

Please explain to me why my complaints do not fall within these categories, especially that of serious corruption.

And

There is a sinister absurdity in the position you are claiming for the IPCC. In effect you are saying that if a police force refuses to address a complaint honestly and does not refer it to the IPCC, then nothing can be done because the IPCC can only take cases which are referred to them. In short, the police can get rid of any complaint, no matter how serious, simply by refusing to record or refer it to the IPCC. Do you dispute my interpretation of the situation?

Do you refuse to answer these questions? If so on what grounds? I would remind you that the IPCC has a public service obligation to answer reasonable questions from the public. Your failure to answer my questions as a matter of course suggests that I am correct in believing that the IPCC does have the power to take this matter.

2. You say that because my complaint against Det Supt Jeff Curtis was refused by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) it cannot be taken by the IPCC. The fact that it was refused by the DPA does one thing only: it unequivocally demonstrates that the DPA were part of the corrupt manipulation of my complaints against the Mirror, the police and the Blairs. Despite having the proof of Morgan’s letter and the knowledge that Jeff Curtis had failed to investigate this clearest of evidence, they refused to take the matter up. You can add them to the already large cast of those guilty of misconduct in a public office and a perversion of the course of justice.

What the IPCC needs to understand is that this whole affair was very political, in fact just about as political as it is possible to get. If you look at the facsimile of Morgan’s letter to the PCC you will see that it involved Tony and Cherie Blair. During the six most important weeks of Blair’s life the Blairs suddenly decided to try to have me prosecuted under the Malicious Communications Act for letters I had written to them seeking their help after I was grossly abused by the media in 1995 and had exhausted all avenues – PCC, BBC Complaints, my MP – without getting redress. I wrote to Blair as the prospective next PM and his wife as a leading human rights lawyer.

The Blairs suffered the gross humiliation of having their attempt rebuffed by the Crown Prosecution Service within hours of it being referred to them – just think of the pressure on the CPS to do what Blair wanted – with the CPS saying unequivocally my letters were perfectly legal. Not only that, but the Blairs did not go to the police when I sent them the letters. Rather, they only made their complaints later after I had circulated them and the non-replies I was getting from their offices to every mainstream media outlet at the beginning of the 1997 election campaign. Clearly the Blairs were not disturbed by the content of the letters as such. What worried them was their failure to meaningfully respond to my requests for help and a fear that this would be taken up by the mainstream media during the election campaign.

Tellingly, after the Blairs failed to have me prosecuted they failed to take any civil action (with its much lower evidential standard of the balance of probabilities) against me. Instead they engaged in an illegal ten year long harassment of me using the state security apparatus and/or private operators. (The Mirror story which induced Morgan’s letter to the PCC stated that Special Branch had taken the matter up and I subsequently used the Data Protection Act to prove that both Special Branch and MI5 had files on me). The harassment covered everything from death threats to the ostentatious opening of my post. The harassment ceased as soon as Blair left Downing Street. In 1999 Sir Richard Body put down this EDM for me:

10 November 1999

CONDUCT OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MEMBER FOR SEDGEFIELD 10:11:99

Sir Richard Body

That this House regrets that the Right honourable Member for Sedgefield [Tony Blair] attempted to persuade the Metropolitan Police to bring criminal charges against Robert Henderson, concerning the Right honourable Member’s complaints to the police of an offence against the person, malicious letters and racial insult arising from letters Robert Henderson had written to the Right honourable Member complaining about various instances of publicly-reported racism involving the Labour Party; and that, after the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaints of the Right honourable Member and the Right honourable Member failed to take any civil action against Robert Henderson, Special Branch were employed to spy upon Robert Henderson, notwithstanding that Robert Henderson had been officially cleared of any illegal action.

I give you that brief précis so that you and your colleagues can understand exactly why everyone from the police to the DPP have been so desperately keen to keep this story under wraps. Of course, the longer the time it extends, the more people involved, the greater the scandal becomes and the more desperate is the desire to censor the matter .

This is a wholly exceptional matter. I have given the IPCC the clearest evidence of wilful and sustained criminal behaviour throughout the police and justice system. When the guards can longer be trusted, they need to be overthrown. The IPCC has the power to do that.

I ask again for a meeting with someone senior within the IPCC. You can of course continue to refuse but think on this: if I do manage to get the scandal into the public fold the IPCC will have to explain exactly what it was doing covering up serious criminal behaviour by the police.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

Cc

Rachel Cerfontyne (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Sarah Green (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner)

Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner)

Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner)

James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner)

Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner)

Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner)

Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner)

Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner)

Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive)

Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary)

Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General)

Alison Saunders (DPP)

G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division)

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner)

DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS)

DCI Tim Neligan (DPS)

CI Andy Dunn (DPS)

Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden)

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden)

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

Sir Gerald Howarth MP

Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit

—————————————————————————-

Dame Anne Owers

Chair

Independent Police Complaints Commission

PO Box 473

Sale

M33 0BW

27 July 2014

Dear Dame Anne,

Further to my email of 8 July I have had a look at the Police Reform Act 2002 which established the IPCC. The sections of interest are:

12 Complaints, matters and persons to which Part 2 applies

(1)In this Part references to a complaint are references (subject to the following provisions of this section) to any complaint about the conduct of a person serving with the police which is made (whether in writing or otherwise) by—

(a)a member of the public who claims to be the person in relation to whom the conduct took place;….

(2)In this Part “conduct matter” means (subject to the following provisions of this section, paragraph 2(4) of Schedule 3 and any regulations made by virtue of section 23(2)(d)) any matter which is not and has not been the subject of a complaint but in the case of which there is an indication (whether from the circumstances or otherwise) that a person serving with the police may have—

(a)committed a criminal offence; or

(b)behaved in a manner which would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings.

(3)The complaints that are complaints for the purposes of this Part by virtue of subsection (1)(b) do not, except in a case falling within subsection (4), include any made by or on behalf of a person who claims to have been adversely affected as a consequence only of having seen or heard the conduct, or any of the alleged effects of the conduct….

(5)For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have witnessed conduct if, and only if—

(a)he acquired his knowledge of that conduct in a manner which would make him a competent witness capable of giving admissible evidence of that conduct in criminal proceedings; or

(b)he has in his possession or under his control anything which would in any such proceedings constitute admissible evidence of that conduct…..

My complaint ticks all the boxes:

1. I am the person directly involved.

2. The crimes which are the subject of my complaint misconduct in a public office and the perversion of the course of justice – are serious and thus should have been submitted to the IPCC under the Mandatory Referral requirement. The fact that they have not been submitted creates at least a disciplinary offence and quite possibly another a criminal offence if it has been done with the intent of suppressing a crime.

3. I have supplied to the police conclusive evidence of a serious crime, namely, Morgan’s own written word that he received information from the police in circumstances which can only have been illegal, and conclusive evidence of a large number of police officers refusing to investigate the crime.

3. All the evidence I have is admissible, viz:

a) The copy of Morgan’s letter was sent to me by the PCC and hence was not obtained by theft or subterfuge.

b) The Mirror story which utilised the illegal information is public knowledge.

c) It is a checkable fact (just look at the police record of my original complaint) that Det Supt Jeff Curtis did not interview Piers Morgan, Jeff Edwards or any other Mirror employee or freelance and consequently did not make any examination of the Mirror’s records to see if they had paid for the information.

d) The evidence of the persistent failure of the police from Operation Elveden to the Directorate of Professional Standards to investigate the conclusive evidence of serious crime is contained my correspondence with Operation Elveden and the DPS, copies of which the IPCC has and which I again include below.

Please explain to me by return why the IPCC is refusing to take up my complaint. The refusal is clearly in breach of the law.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

CC

Rachel Cerfontyne (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Sarah Green (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner)

Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner)

Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner)

James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner)

Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner)

Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner)

Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner)

Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner)

Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive)

Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary)

Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General)

Alison Saunders (DPP)

G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division)

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner)

DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS)

DCI Tim Neligan (DPS)

CI Andy Dunn (DPS)

Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden)

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden)

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

Sir Gerald Howarth MP

Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit

—————————————————————————–

PCC ref: 2014/030525

!enquiries Jul 28 at 4:45 PM

To

‘anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk’

Dear Mr Henderson

Thank you for your two emails of 24 and 27 July 2014. I will endeavour to answer the points that you raised.

In your email of 24 July 2014, you questioned why your complaints against senior officers had not been referred to the IPCC. To support your assertion that your complaints should have been referred to the IPCC because they were against senior officers, you quote the following passage from the IPCC Statutory Guidance:

‘Appeals

1.27 Chief officers now have responsibility for handling certain appeals. All appeals about the recording of complaints will continue to be dealt with by the IPCC. The IPCC will also deal with any appeal concerning a complaint about the conduct of a senior officer or complaints that have been or must be referred to the IPCC.’

However, this passage does not state that complaints against senior officers need to be referred to the IPCC. Rather, it states that the IPCC will act as the relevant appeal body for any complaint about the conduct of a senior officer.

I note that your complaints are against a DI Smith and a DS Curtis. In the context of the above passage, a senior officer is an officer holding a rank above Chief Superintendent.

In both your emails of 24 and 27 July, you repeat your assertion that your complaints should have been referred to the IPCC because they constitute serious corruption. However, both of your complaints against DI Smith and DS Curtis essentially amount to an allegation that they have failed to investigate criminal allegations against Mr Piers Morgan and Mr Jeff Edwards.

While I accept that your original complaint against the unnamed officer who passed information to Mr Piers Morgan would meet the mandatory referral criteria, I again remind you that this incident was referred to our predecessor the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) in 1999. The IPCC is not able to deal with matters which have already been dealt with by the PCA.

On 28 July I received yet another reply from Jack Paynter (see below) which failed to address the question of the IPCC’s legal obligations to investigate. He seems to either be unaware of the IPCC’s own definition of corruption or is aware of it and is cynically using that well tried and tested bureaucratic trick of trying to exhaust a complainant by multiplying correspondence through a deliberate failure to answer questions adequately or at all.

Mr Painter takes issue with me over the meaning of corruption. He claims that my complaints post Jeff Curtis do not fall within the meaning of the word as far as the IPCC is concerned. Well, here is the IPCC definition, viz.:

35. Police forces and police authorities are required by law to refer complaints or conduct matters to the IPCC if the allegation includes serious corruption which is defined in the IPCC’s Statutory Guidance 2010 as including:

• Any attempt to pervert the course of justice or other conduct likely seriously to harm the administration of justice, in particular the criminal justice system

• Payments or other benefits or favours received in connection with the performance or duties amounting to an offence in relation to which a magistrates’ court would be likely to decline jurisdiction

• Corrupt controller, handler or informer relationships

•Provision of confidential information in return for payment or other benefits or favours where the conduct goes beyond a possible prosecution for an offence under section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998

• Extraction and supply of seized controlled drugs, firearms or other material

• Attempts or conspiracies to do any of the above18

All my complaints against the police are of misconduct in a public office and the perversion of the course of justice. The offences arise from a failure to act on conclusive evidence of criminal behaviour by Piers Morgan and Jeff Edwards when they were employed by the Daily Mirror. Ergo, these complaints indubitably fall under the IPCC’s “Any attempt to pervert the course of justice or other conduct likely seriously to harm the administration of justice, in particular the criminal justice system”. They are also relevant offences which qualifies them for mandatory referral to the IPCC..

By own rules and regulations you cannot legally refuse to investigate these complaints. The fact that they have not been submitted automatically to the IPCC as the law requires also means you need to take action against the responsible officers for failing to comply with the law. Most importantly, you must ensure that an investigation of Piers Morgan and Jeff Edwards is begun ASAP. If you fail to do any or all of these things you will yourself be guilty of misconduct in a public office and arguably of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

That leaves my complaint against De Supt Jeff Curtis and the failure of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) in 1999 to investigate my complaints. Mr Painter says that the IPCC cannot investigate complaints rejected by the PCA Please let me know the legal basis for this claim.

But regardless of whether there is such a legal bar, if the other police officers who have entered the picture since Jeff Curtis’ involvement are investigated it would be absurd if Curtis was not also investigated.

I ask once again to meet you.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

Cc Rachel Cerfontyne (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Sarah Green (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner)

Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner)

Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner)

James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner)

Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner)

Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner)

Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner)

Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner)

Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive)

Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary)

Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General)

Alison Saunders (DPP)

G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division)

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner)

DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS)

DCI Tim Neligan (DPS)

CI Andy Dunn (DPS)

Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden)

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden)

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

Sir Gerald Howarth MP

Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit

—————————————————————-

!enquiries Aug 12 at 3:15 PM

To ‘robert henderson’

Dear Mr Henderson

Thank you for your email dated 6 August 2014, unfortunately Dame Anne is not in a position to respond to individual enquires and your email has been passed to the Customer Contact Team to respond.

I am sorry that you feel we were unable to answer your questions in our previous response, however our position remains the same. This incident was referred to our predecessor the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) in 1999, the IPCC is not able to deal with matters which have already been dealt with by the PCA.

As you will see from the email from Claire Parker immediately below I have been sent yet another reply from your office which fails to answer my questions. Let me list the questions again:

1. Since when has a senior public servant not been in a position to answer individual queries from a member of the public with serious and pertinent reasons to ask for a meeting, namely, (1) the persistent refusal of the Met Police to investigate serious crimes and (2) the persistent refusal of IPCC staff to engage with the clearest evidence of serious criminality within the Met Police?

2. In my last email to you (6 August) I asked for the legal basis for Mr Paynter’s claim that a complaint already reviewed by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) – my complaint against De Supt Jeff Curtis – could not be investigated by the IPCC. Ms Parker has failed to provide the legal basis. Please supply it.

3. I wrote this in my last email to you: “All my complaints against the police are of misconduct in a public office and the perversion of the course of justice. The offences arise from a failure to act on conclusive evidence of criminal behaviour by Piers Morgan and Jeff Edwards when they were employed by the Daily Mirror. Ergo, these complaints indubitably fall under the IPCC’s “Any attempt to pervert the course of justice or other conduct likely seriously to harm the administration of justice, in particular the criminal justice system”. They are also relevant offences which qualifies them for mandatory referral to the IPCC.” Ms Carter has failed to address this matter. Please explain to me why my complaints other than the one concerning Det Sup Jeff Curtis do not fall within the IPCC’s remit.

You are treading on very dangerous ground Dame Anne. I have provided you with ample opportunity to take up these matters and your refusal to do already constitutes the criminal offence of misconduct in a public office and arguably is an attempt to pervert the course of justice as the IPCC is de facto part of the justice system.

If the story got into the public fold you probably would be tempted to claim that you knew nothing about the business.

That would be a difficult position to sustain because (1) I have circulated my emails relating to the matter, including my emails to you, to enough people within the IPCC and the Police to make it improbable that you would not know of the case and (2) the nature of those involved with the case, including most importantly Tony and Cherie Blair, makes it exceedingly likely that it would have been brought to your attention.

Throughout my ten year battle with the Blairs I had these senior police officers personally deal with my complaints against the Blairs and others such as Piers Morgan who were attached to the story:

My complaints ranged from the Blairs’ attempts to pervert the course of justice by making allegations to the police about me which as lawyers they must have known were bogus to the death threats I was receiving. As I am sure you are aware officers of this seniority would not normally be involved at the operational level with such allegations of crimes. Yet I had the likes of Tony Dawson – a very influential as well as senior copper – personally taking my statements. The only reasonable explanation for such utterly exceptional treatment was the Blairs’ involvement.

You have a legal obligation to answer my questions. I suggest you do it before you put yourself unambiguously into the realm of criminality. I ask again that we meet to discuss the matter.

One further point. In his email to me of 21 Jusly Mr Paynter wrote “…I note that your email contains allegations about a number of officers within the Metropolitan Police which have not been made in your earlier complaint. Therefore, I have forwarded your email on to the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) so that these matters can be considered as a new complaint.”

I have received nothing from the DPS after 4 weeks. Please take action to make the DPS contact me about these complaints. Incidentally, they all fall within the IPCC definition of corruption. Therefore, the DPS has a mandatory duty to refer them to you.

For the legal basis of my assertion that the IPCC is unable to take action with regard to a complaint that was referred to and investigated by the PCA, please refer to The Independent Police Complaints Commission (Transitional Provisions) Order 2004.

With regard to your query as to why your subsequent complaints have not been referred to the IPCC, please refer to my email of 28 July 2014. Please note, I consider that I have dealt with these matters in my previous emails. Any further emails received which raise matters which have previously been deal with will be filed, but not responded to. However, as you have not received a recording decision concerning the complaint I forwarded on 21 July 2014 within 15 working days, I have forwarded your email to our Casework Administration department. They will process your appeal and you will receive a formal acknowledgment in due course. Please send any appeal related information via email to northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk.

Finally, I note that you continue to copy numerous individuals within the IPCC into your emails. As you may have gathered, these emails are passed to the Customer Contact Centre to be dealt with. In future, please send any emails concerning your appeal to northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk>. Any general enquiries should be sent to enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk>. If you continue to send your emails to multiple individuals within the IPCC, we may consider restricting your email access to the organisation.

I have received another email from your office, this time from Jack Paynter. His email is dated 26 August. A copy is directly below.

Mr Paynter has answered one of my questions, namely, the authority which debars complaints submitted to the Police Complaints Authority being accepted by the IPCC, viz:

“(3) No conduct matter shall be recorded under paragraph 10 or 11 of Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act if its subject-matter was previously submitted to the appropriate authority or referred to the Authority under Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Police Act 1996 and as respects that complaint or matter any of the events mentioned in paragraph (1)(a) to (e) occurred.”

As my complaint to the PCA was corruptly rejected by them, the legislation leads to the dangerous (for justice) situation whereby a complainant has no remedy for a gross abuse of power. However, in view of the legal position I will set this complaint aside for the moment.

That does not get out of the deep hole you have dug for yourself. The rest of my complaints were never submitted to the PCA. Hence, the IPCC has a legal obligation to accept the complaints and a legal obligation to take disciplinary action against the various police officers who have failed to perform their mandatory duty of referring the complaints to the IPCC – all my complaints are relevant offences and hence the referral to you is mandatory

Mr Paynter has simply ignored these matters, both in his latest email and his previous ones. It is high time you dealt with these matters yourself. You have the full details of the outstanding complaints in my previous emails so I will not repeat them.

One last thing, Mr Paynter complains about the fact that I have been circulating my emails to the senior management of the IPCC and threatens to restrict my ability to email them. That is very telling. Stopping the circulation of damaging facts is the final refuge of the public servant in trouble because they have misbehaved. I am writing to the senior management to ensure that the failure of the IPCC to do its legal duty is known to each and every one of you so that none of those emailed will be able to say they did not know what was going on when the matter becomes public.

I repeat my request to meet with you.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Independent Police Complaints Commission

PO Box 473

Sale

M33 0BW

Our reference no: 2014/030525

Mr Robert Henderson

156 Levita House

Chalton St

London NW1 1HR

11 September 2014

Dear Mr Henderson .

Thank you for your appeal, received in this office on 17 August 2014. You asked us to review the non-recording of your complaint by the Metropolitan Police.

This letter acknowledges receipt of your appeal. However, none of the issues have yet been considered.

As part of the appeals process the IPCC will contact the relevant chief officer or local policing body, to get all the papers they hold about your complaint. We will use this to assess your appeal.

We are currently experiencing a significant volume of work and therefore it may take up to 8 weeks for your appeal to be allocated a casework manager. We would like to assure you that we are doing all we can to manage our appeals work effectively and apologise for any delay you may experience. It is possible that your appeal may be allocated more quickly than this.

If you have any further information in support of your appeal you should provide this to us immediately. Any addition information you provide should relate to your original complaint. You will not be able to provide additional information for us to consider after a decision has been made on your appeal or about any new complaint you have made or will be making.

We deal with appeals in date order based on the date they are received by the IPCC. Please see the appeals area of the IPCC website for the latest forecast of the overall delay , and the date of receipt of appeals that are currently allocated and being reviewed by a Casework Manager.

Our role is to review whether or not the chief officer is the appropriate authority to consider your complaint and whether or not they should have recorded the matter as a complaint under the Police Reform Act 2002. If you have not been given a recording decision we can direct the chief officer to provide you with this. Once we have completed the review, the decision we make about your appeal is final. Any direction made about recording our complaint is not an indication from the IPCC about the merit of your complaint.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Keane

Casework Administrator

Mr Peter Keane

Casework Administrator

Independent Police Complaints Commission

PO Box 473

Sale

M33 0BW

Tel: 0161 246 8502

northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Independent Police Complaints Commission

Mr Peter Keane

Casework Administrator

PO Box 473

Sale

M33 0BW

23 September 2014

Your reference no: 2014/030525

Dear Mr Keane,

I have just received your letter of 11 September. There are problems with the mail in my area because deliveries are being outsourced to a private company who are regularly dumping post rather than delivering it. Consequently, it would be better to conduct future correspondence with me by email.

To ensure you have copies of the full correspondence relating to this case I enclose that correspondence below. It contains everything from my initial contact with Operation Elveden to my last email to Anne Owers dated 30 August.

The important thing to grasp is that my complaints fall within the category of those which must as a matter of legal obligation be referred by the police to the IPCC. The IPCC Mandatory referral criteria contains this

The appropriate authority must refer complaints and conduct matters involving:

serious corruption

complaints or conduct matters which are alleged to have arisen from the same incident as anything falling within these criteria

Serious corruption

For the purposes of paragraphs 4(1)(b) and 13(1)(b) of Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act

and regulations 2(2)(a)(iii) and 5(1)(c) of the Regulations, the term ‘serious

corruption’ shall refer to conduct that includes:

• Any attempt to pervert the course of justice or other conduct likely to seriously harm

the administration of justice, in particular the criminal justice system

• Payments or other benefits or favours received in the connection with the

performance of duties where a Magistrates’ Court would be likely to decline

jurisdiction

• Corrupt controller/handler/informer relationships

• Provision of confidential information in return for payment or other benefits or

favours where the conduct goes beyond a possible prosecution for an offence under

section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998

• Extraction and supply of seized controlled drugs, firearms or other material

• Attempts or conspiracies to do any of the above.

All of my complaints apart from that against Supt Jeff Curtis fall within those regulations. I have made this clear to the IPCC in my emails to Anne Owers dated 8 July, 6 August, 17 August and 30 August and my email to Jack Paynter dated 17 July and 24 July.

When obtaining the information from the various police bodies involved please ensure that everything a sent to Operation Elveden is obtain. This includes a tape recording of Jeff Curtis promising to interview the Mirror editor and other personnel which he then failed to do.

I attach a facsimile copy of the Piers Morgan letter to the PCC in which he admits receiving information from the police in circumstances which can only have been illegal. I have supplied this to all the parties mentioned in the voluminous correspondence I have copied to Mr Keane and you should have it already. I send it to you to make absolutely certain that this vital piece of evidence does not go missing before the appeal takes place.

This is a formal appeal against the refusal of the Metropolitan Police to investigate Piers Morgan and Jeff Edwards for the illegal receipt of information from the police and perjury before the Leveson Inquiry and Det Supt Jeff Curtis (now retired) for a failure to investigate Morgan and Edwards when the complaint was first submitted to the Met.

You will find below the following correspondence in this order:

My correspondence with Operation Elveden (Elveden)

My correspondence with the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS).

The two batches of correspondence are clearly delineated. Each set of emails runs from the earliest to the latest in that order, that is , the latest email will be the last one in the set.

The matter looks complicated simply because of the volume of correspondence. This is entirely due to Elveden and the DPS prevaricating. You will see from the correspondence that I made the complaint in January 2013 and I did not receive a conclusive answer from the DPS until March 2014 and only then after I had written to the Home Secretary to complain.

Stripped of the volume of correspondence the business is very simple. I have provided Elevden with a letter sent by Piers Morgan to the Press Complaints Commission when he was editor of the Daily Mirror in which Morgan admits that he received information from a Metropolitan police officer in circumstances which can only have been illegal. A facsimile copy of Morgan’s letter is attached.

Edwards was the Mirror’s chief crime reporter who wrote the story based on the information obtained illegally from the police. Even without Morgan’s letter it is clear from the Mirror story that information had been illegally obtained because of the nature of the information in the story. I supplied Elveden with a photostat copy of the story

For the perjury complaint I supplied Elveden with the relevant extracts from Leveson stating that they have never obtained information illegally.

As for Det Supt Curtis, not only did he fail to question anyone at the Mirror or examine their records for evidence of payment for information, he did so after promising me that he would be doing both things. I provided Operation Elevden with a tape recording of Curtis making those promises.

The fact that I made the complaints against Curtis 14 years ago and the PCA rejected them is neither here nor there because of the peculiar circumstances which obtained at the time. Tony and Cherie Blair attempted to have me prosecuted and failed in the most humiliating fashion during the 1997 General Election campaign (the CPS sent the papers back to the police within hours of receiving them with NO CRIME emblazoned across them) . The Mirror story concerned the Blairs’ failure to have me prosecuted. After that failure the Blairs set Special Branch and MI5 on to me (I used the Data Protection Act to force both to admit they held files of me) and I consequently suffered ten years of harassment (for Blair’s entire premiership) which the Tory MP Sir Richard Body made public in the following Early Day Motion:

CONDUCT OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MEMBER FOR SEDGEFIELD 10:11:99

Sir Richard Body

That this House regrets that the Right honourable Member for Sedgefield [Tony Blair] attempted to persuade the Metropolitan Police to bring criminal charges against Robert Henderson, concerning the Right honourable Member’s complaints to the police of an offence against the person, malicious letters and racial insult arising from letters Robert Henderson had written to the Right honourable Member complaining about various instances of publicly-reported racism involving the Labour Party; and that, after the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaints of the Right honourable Member and the Right honourable Member failed to take any civil action against Robert Henderson, Special Branch were employed to spy upon Robert Henderson, notwithstanding that Robert Henderson had been officially cleared of any illegal action.

The reason I could not get the police and the PCA to act is horribly simple: they were not willing to act because Blair was Prime Minister, that is they refused to apply the law for illicit reasons to protect the most powerful politician in the land. This was truly a who shall guard the guards situation. To reject my complaint on the grounds that it is out of time would be perverse in these circumstances. At the least, those at the PCA who refused my complaint should be charged with misconduct in a public office.

As this matter has already been reviewed by the DPS, I presume that they have the full documentation and other items such as the tape recording of Curtis. Should anything be missing let me know and I will supply duplicates. If the DPS do not have the complete papers and other supporting artefacts, the DCI Neligan’s review of the case is by definition a sham.

My grounds for appeal are as follows:

1. I have not been adequately informed about the findings of the investigation or any proposals resulting from the report

As I have already pointed out, the handling of my complaints has been a dismal catalogue of prevarication. In addition, despite my repeated requests to be interviewed byElveden and give a formal statement and to be interviewed by the DPS, astonishingly I have been denied any face to face contact with any member of Elevden or the DPS and consequently have not been able to make a formal statement. This behaviour strongly suggests that both Elevden and the DPS know very well that I have provided cast-iron evidence and are desperate not to be subjected to questioning as to why no investigation has occurred because they know that it is impossible to give a rational reason for why they have not acted on Morgan’s incriminating letter.

I disagree with the findings of the investigation including whether a person has a case to answer for misconduct or gross misconduct

The findings are absurd because of the Morgan letter alone, but the Mirror story and Curtis’ failure to investigate Morgan, Edwards and the Mirror generally make them doubly ridiculous.

All that both Elevden and the DPS have done is say we do not choose to investigate. They have not meaningfully justified their refusasl. For example, take DCI Neligan’s dismissal of the complaints against Morgan and Edwards,viz:

As Appropriate Authority, I am required to consider the findings and conclusions of complaint investigations to determine:

whether the report should be referred to the Director of Prosecutions (CPS);

whether or not any person to whose conduct the investigation relates to has a case to answer in respect of misconduct, gross misconduct or no case to answer;

whether or not any such person’s performance is unsatisfactory;

what action, if any, we will take in respect of the matters dealt with in the report; and

what other action (if any) we will take in respect of these matters.

After considering these points I am satisfied the outcome does not need to be referred to the CPS.

I can also inform you that it has been determined there has not been a breach of the professional standards by any officer. Furthermore, I have conducted review of the officers’ performance, which I found to be satisfactory. This means that no further action will be taken in respect of your complaint.

Absolutely no explanation of why the complaints were refused is provided , merely the grounds on which they have been considered. That is shamefully inadequate. Worse, there is good reason to believe DCI Neligan cobbled together this judgement after I had panicked him into doing something by writing to the Home Secretary and copying the email to the type of distribution list that is attached to this email. I very much doubt whether he has even read most of the correspondence which arose from the case before it came to his desk.

The evidence is cast-iron and a failure to investigate is clear evidence of misconduct in public office and an attempt to pervert the course of justice by every officer who has handled my original complaint and the referral to the DPS.

3. I disagree with the police proposals for action – or lack of them – in light of the report

I disagree with them for the reasons given in 2, that is the evidence is cast-iron and a failure to investigate is clear evidence of misconduct in public office and an attempt to pervert the course of justice by every officer who has handled my original complaint and the referral to the DPS. Please take this as a formal complaint against all these officers. You have their names in the supporting correspondence.

4. I disagree with the decision not to refer the report to the CPS.

I disagree for exactly the same reasons I have given under 3.

The hard facts which are being ignored are these:

a. The Piers Morgan letter to the PCC is enough to convict Morgan of receiving information illegally from a police officer, conspiracy to breach the Official Secrets Act and conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and breaches of the Data Protection Act. All that applies whether or not it can ;proved that money or any other material inducement was given to the police officer.

b. Morgan’s letter plus the Mirror story which used the illicit information is enough to convict Edwards of receiving information illegally from a police officer, conspiracy to breach the Official Secrets Act and conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and breaches of the Data Protection Act.

c. The evidence given by Morgan and Edwards under oath provides strong grounds for investigating them for perjury. If it could be shown that the police officer received money – which was almost certainly the case – they would be open and shut cases of perjury. At the least Morgan and Edwards should be investigated to see whether money did change hands.

d. The Morgan letter, the Mirror story and the tape recording of Curtis promising to investigate Morgan, Edwards and the Mirror generally is enough to convict Curtis or misconduct in a public office and of perverting the course of justice.

I suggest you print out the attached Piers Morgan letter and sit and look at it for a while and ask yourself how on earth a failure to investigate such evidence could be explained in a court or before TV cameras.

Finally, I repeat the request to meet with whoever is going to deal with this case at the DPS and to give a formal statement.

Thank you for your appeal regarding your recent complaint against police, reference PC/0455/14. This was received in this office on 6th April 2014.

I regret to inform you it is taking approximately sixteen (16) weeks to consider new appeals. Therefore, you ought to expect not to hear anything in the intervening period. However, we are constantly reviewing cases and that timescale may be reduced. If not, we will write or email you again in 16 weeks time with an update, providing a realistic timescale of when you can expect your appeal assessment to be completed.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth Gibbs Police SergeantDirectorate of Professional StandardsAppeals Team

———————————————————————–

Directorate of Professional Standards

Empress State Building

22nd Floor

Lillie Road

West Brompton

London

SW6 1TR

Telephone: #0207 230 1212

#Email:

Your ref: #

Our ref: # #PC455/14

Date: 16 April 2014

Mr Robert Henderson

156 Levita House

Charlton St

London

NW1 1HR

Dear Mr Henderson,

On 10/03/04 a letter was sent to you, which asked for your representations in relation to the complaints you made concerning Operation Elveden, as it was considered your complaint was out of time. You were given 28 days to make these representations and informed that at the end of this period an application for permission to take the the investigation no further (disapplication) may be made.

This letter is to inform you that due to the lack of representations, or sufficient representations, an application was made to the DOPS Complaints Support Chief Inspector, who has been delegated by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to consider disapplications.

I can now inform you they have decided to grant disapplication on the grounds that this case is out of time. This decision was made on the information and the evidence provided for your complaint and has been deemed appropriate because as explained in my original letter, the events you are complaining about happened some 14 years ago.

As your complaint has been disapplied the DPS Complaints Support Inspector has also considered what, if any, further action needs to be taken with the conduct or performance of any MPS officers or staff. They have decided no further action is required.

You have the right of appeal in relations to the decision to disapply your complaint and the outcome of it, to the Appeals Unit of Directorate of Professional Standards . There is no right of appeal to the IPCC. You have 28 days from the day after the date of this letter within which to make your appeal. The 28th day is 16/05/14. Appeals received after 28 days may not be allowed unless there are exceptional circumstances.

I have your letter dated 16th April which only arrived today, 25th April. The envelope in which your arrived is postmarked the 23rd April. Why the delay? (I have included a copy of your letter immediately below to inform those on the circulation list).

Your letter is distinctly odd. It could reasonably be interpreted as you saying that I did not make an appeal within the 28 days allowed. In fact, I submitted an appeal on 6th April which was within the 28 days. Not only that I included you in the distribution list for that appeal. You will find below the original email and add the acknowledgement of its receipt on the 6th April. The acknowledgement informed me that the appeal was accepted but would probably not be looked at for six months. (Please note that I have copied this email to the DPS appeals section).

Wording such as “This letter is to inform you that due to the lack of representations, or sufficient representations…” is the type of cover-all eventualities phrasing which lawyers use. It does not give any indication of what has actually happened. The use of such wording together with your failure to (1) demonstrate anything but the sketchiest knowledge of the matter or (2) to address questions such as the Who shall guard the guards scenario leads me to believe that you have given this case little study or consideration. That being so please answer these questions:

1. What documents have you received relating to this matter? Please list the documents individually when you reply.

2. Please list the documents you have read.

3. Have you received the tape recording between D Supt Curtis and me in which he promises to question Morgan et al?

4. If you have the tape recording have you listened to it in its entirety? If not why not?

5. Were you aware when you wrote on the 16th April that I had appealed? If not why not?

6. If you were you aware when you wrote on the 16th April that I had appealed why have you not referred to the appeal in your letter?

9. Did the DPS Complaints Chief Inspector know of my appeal when he made the decision? If he did not I shall expect you to immediately bring this fact to immediately his attention so that he can consider the matter with all the facts before him.

In none of the correspondence with the DPS has there been any meaningful attempt to address the issues I have raised. To keep saying it is out of time is a nonsense because not only is there no statute of limitations for these crimes, serious crimes are routinely investigated and people charged after far more time has passed than has happened since I made my original complaint to the police.

The reason why my complaints were not initially investigated was the involvement of the Blairs. Once the failure of the police and every other part of the justice system to act on clear evidence of criminality by Morgan and others had happened, the failure itself became a bar to future attempts to get the matter investigated. Both those in authority who had failed to act and those who had not been originally involved but were now in positions of authority, had a vested interest in not investigating when the complaints were re-submitted together with fresh complaints in 2013. The vested interest was both individual and corporate. The latter (the corporate vested interest) meant that those not involved in the original failure to investigate refused to investigate when the old and new complaints were submitted to them, because to investigate would potentially mean criminal trials of those involved in the original cover-up with the subsequent bad publicity for the Met and many other people with power and influence.

I repeat yet again my request to meet with you or another senior officer, for example, the DPS Complaints Chief Inspector, to discuss the affair and give a formal statement.

A reply by return please.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

———————————————————————–

Metropolitan Police

Directorate of Professional Standards

Prevention and Organisational Learning Command

DPS Appeals Unit

22nd Floor

Empress State Building

Empress Approach

Lillie Road

London

SW6 1TR

E-Mail: Appeals@met.pnn.police.uk

Our reference: PC/00455/14

Date: 19th June 2014

Dear Mr Henderson

This letter is about your appeal against the outcome of your complaint against police received on 5th December 2013. Your complaint was dealt with in two parts. Firstly, you received an ‘outcome of investigation’ report from DCI Neligan, detailing your complaints about DI Smith. Additionally, your complaint concerning retired Detective Superintendent Curtis was subject of something called a ‘disapplication’. You appealed against the outcome of the investigation, in your appeal email dated 6th April 2014. Upon receipt of a further letter dated 16th April 2014, informing you of the decision to disapply the latter part (against Mr Curtis) you submitted a further email of appeal, dated 27th April 2014. Both aspects of your appeal will be discussed and addressed in this letter.

1. Appeal against Investigation

In answer to the first part of your appeal (investigation), the Metropolitan Police Appeals Team’s role in the appeal process is to review the investigation into your complaint, not to re-investigate your complaint. This appeal outcome is completed on behalf of Superintendent Sarti, with delegated authority for dealing with Appeals on behalf of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.

Our decision on your appeal is linked to paragraph 25 of Schedule 3 of the Police Reform Act 2002. I have looked at the following issues in concluding your appeal:

·Whether the findings of the investigation need to be reconsidered

·Whether the outcomes, for example in relation to whether any disciplinary or other actions should be taken, are appropriate

·Whether you received adequate information about the findings of the investigation

I have reviewed your email of complaint dated 5th December 2013, addressed to the Commissioner. You complaint was recorded on 8th January 2014.

The decisions I have reached in relation to your appeal are outlined below:

1.Are the findings of the police investigation appropriate/ proportionate to the complaint?

Your heads of complaint have been obtained from the following:

Your email of 5th December 2013 and accompanying attachments/email string

Your complaint was about the decision by Detective Inspector Daniel Smith, and his refusal to investigate three allegations of crime concerning Mr Piers Morgan and Mr Jeff Edwards, repeated below;

1. That Piers Morgan when editor of the Mirror obtained information from a Met Officer(s) in circumstances which can only have been illegal. The letter from Morgan to the PCC which I have supplied to Elveden and which you have a copy of in facsimile conclusively proves this.

2. That Jeff Edwards when chief crime reporter for the Daily Mirror illegally received information from Met Officer(s). Morgan’s letter plus the story printed by the Daily Mirror about me conclusively prove Edwards received such information.

3. That both Morgan and Edwards committed perjury when questioned under oath about receiving information illegally from the police. I provided Operation Elveden with the relevant Leveson transcripts.

In his response to your allegations of crime, DI Daniel Smith responded;

Dear Mr. Henderson,

I write in relation to the allegations you made following your contact with DC Rooke in January of this year. I have reviewed the matters raised by you in this, and subsequent communications, with DC Rooke.

I understand that the matters raised by you relate to an article published in 1997 and that the matter was investigated by the Metropolitan Police Service (Complaints Investigation Bureau). The matter was referred to the Police Complaints Authority in 1999.

I understand that there is no new evidence or information available and as a result I have decided that no investigation will be conducted into the points raised by you.

In relation to the Perjury allegation, having read the transcripts provided, I do not believe there is evidence that shows an offence has been committed. As a consequence this allegation will not be investigated.

Yours sincerely,

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith

Complaint Versus Criminal investigation

DCI Neligan was appointed to investigate your public complaint about DI Smith’s decision, not to investigate the criminal allegations about Mr Morgan and Mr Edwards. That is an important point to differentiate because in your email of appeal you appear to be confusing the two issues.

In the outcome letter sent to you, dated 10th March 2013, DCI Neligan has identified your complaint and the steps taken to investigate it. I therefore consider that a proportionate investigation has been carried out.

I have considered your grounds for appeal, as set out in your email dated 6th April 2014.

Point 1, you have appealed on the basis that you have not been interviewed personally by the Investigating Officers, either of the criminal investigation, or the complaint investigation. In my considerations, I have looked at the email strings you have submitted. The details of the criminal allegations are comprehensive and sufficiently detailed upon which DI Smith based his initial assessment in terms of the criminal allegations. Likewise, there is sufficient detail upon which DCI Neligan can base his assessment of his complaint investigation and therefore I do not consider it necessary to interview you at any stage up to those reviews being conducted.

In terms of the criminal investigation, DI Smith had articulated his rationale for not investigating your first 2 criminal allegations (that they were already investigated by the PCA in 1999) as there is no new evidence; there was no merit in further investigation of those allegations. The third allegation, (perjury), was subject to a preliminary review, as DI Smith explained, when he reviewed the transcripts. His assessment was that there is no evidence of the offence of perjury having been made out. Consequently, that allegation would not be further investigated.

In his report, DCI Neligan has elaborated upon these points and provided you with additional information in terms of the police obligations under National Crime Recording Standards as well as the MPS Crime Management Policy.

Point 2, you believe the findings of DCI Neligan’s investigation “are absurd because of the Morgan letter alone, but the Mirror story and Curtis’s failure to investigate Morgan, Edwards and the Mirror generally make them doubly ridiculous.”

I mentioned above, the difference between DI smith’s investigation and DCI Neligan’s, but following on from Point 2 above, it is important to make absolutely clear, the role difference between the two investigations.

DI Smith was asked to investigate your criminal allegations. You disagreed with his decisions and have made a public complaint about DI Smith. DCI Neligan was appointed to and has, investigated the complaint about DI Smith. DCI Neligan has not investigated your criminal allegations about Morgan and Edwards. However, in conducting his investigation, DCI Neligan has looked at the actions/decisions made by DI Smith when looking at the investigation of Morgan and Edwards.

I find the steps taken by DCI Neligan, in examining the actions of DI smith, to be proportionate and reasonable.

Point 3, I similarly refer to the response to point 2 above.

Point 4, DCI Neligan is being asked to consider if DI Smith has committed a criminal offence, by his (Smith) not investigating your criminal allegations any further. DCI Neligan has concluded that the actions of DI Smith are correct and therefore there are no criminal actions for the CPS to consider. I concur with that rationale.

On the basis of this assessment the conclusion reached by the Investigating Officer, DCI Neligan is appropriate. I do not uphold your appeal.

2.Is the decision that the police have made about whether an officer has a case to answer for misconduct appropriate?

Yes. The outcome of the Investigation is appropriate and the Investigating Officer has concluded there is insufficient evidence to prove a case of misconduct against DI Smith. I do not uphold your appeal.

3.Are the force’s proposed actions following the investigation adequate?

Yes. The Investigation has not found a case to answer and no action has been proposed. I do not uphold your appeal.

4.Have you been provided with adequate information following the investigation of your complaint?

Yes. The original report by DCI Neligan addresses all of the complaints submitted by you, the rationale behind the conclusions reached, and includes your right to appeal. I do not uphold your appeal.

5.Has the investigation been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)? If not, is this decision appropriate?

The report has not been referred to the CPS. I consider this decision to be appropriate as the investigation and the underlying evidence does not indicate that a criminal offence has been made out. I refer to my assessment under Point 4 above. I do not uphold your appeal.

After considering all the information available I have now made a decision about your appeal against the outcome of the investigation.I have not upheld your appeal.

You are not able to appeal against the assessment of your appeal. If you have any questions or need more information about the appeal decision please contact me using the details shown at the top of this letter.

2. Appeal against Disapplication

I will now respond to your other appeal, against the decision to disapply the requirements of Schedule 3 Police Reform Act 2002 to your complaint about ex-DSU Jeff Curtis. Your appeal was received on 27th April 2014. An appeal may be made to the relevant appeal body against a decision to disapply the requirements of Schedule 3 of the Police Reform Act 2002. The Chief Officer (where they are the relevant appeal body) must determine whether the decision to disapply those requirements should have been taken. This appeal outcome is completed on behalf of Detective Superintendent Sarti, with delegated authority for dealing with Appeals on behalf of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service

In determining your appeal, I must consider the following points ;

Has the complaint been, or should it have been, referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)?

The complaint about retired Detective Superintendent Curtis concerned his alleged conduct in 2003 and specifically, that he deliberately failed to investigate your original allegations against Mr Morgan & Mr Edwards despite promises made to you in a telephone conversation. Such a complaint does not meet the criteria for a mandatory referral to the IPCC, nor was it so referred (to the IPCC). The Relevant Appeal Body is therefore the Force itself.

Was the decision to disapply made with the permission of the IPCC?

No. The complaint was not referred and did not require referral to the IPCC. Therefore, permission to disapply was not required from the IPCC.

Was the complainant offered the opportunity to make representations before the decision to disapply was made and if any representations were provided, were these taken into account in making the decision to disapply?

Yes. Within the Outcome of Investigation report, dated 10th March 2014, included a request for you to provide reasons why your complaint concerning ex-DSU Jeff Curtis ought not to be disapplied on the basis that it was ‘out of time’ i.e. More than 12 months have elapsed between the date of the incident complained of and the making of the complaint, and no good reasons could be shown for that delay.

You responded in your email of 6th April 2014, and those responses were considered by Chief Inspector Dunn who decided there were no good reasons for the delay of over 12 years in the making of the complaint. I accept that you had previously reported the matters originally to the Police Complaints Authority who had ‘rejected them’.

After considering your email of appeal, dated 27th April 2014, I consider the decision to disapply your complaint was appropriate. The incident complained of was more than 12 months before the complaint was made and no good reason for that delay has been demonstrated. Your appeal is not upheld.

Actions required of the MPS

The MPS will take no further action regarding your complaints or the appeals. You are not able to appeal the outcome of this appeal assessment. No further right of appeal exists with the IPCC. If you disagree with this appeal assessment, you are advised to seek independent legal advice.

The DPS’ response looks like a very hastily cobbled together piece written simply to cover the backs of Neligan and his department because of the inordinate delay in responding to me. Much of the text was taken from my previous correspondence with Elevden, the CPS and the DPS. It is largely a cut and [paste job.

The rejection of the complaints is farcically thin. All Neligan does is baldly assert that there is no misconduct or grounds to investigate in the cases of Morgan and Edwards. In the case of D-Supt Jeff Curtis he tosses aside the fact that Curtis did not interview Morgan and Edwards.

Thank you for all the information you have provided concerning your complaints about Operation Elveden. We take all complaints seriously and I am grateful to you for bringing this matter to our attention.

In your latest e-mail, you explained that you had made the following criminal allegations to Operation Elveden:

1. That Piers Morgan when editor of the Mirror obtained information from a Met Officer(s) in circumstances which can only have been illegal. The letter from Morgan to the PCC which I have supplied to Elveden and which you have a copy of in facsimile conclusively proves this.

2. That Jeff Edwards when chief crime reporter for the Daily Mirror illegally received information from Met Officer(s). Morgan’s letter plus the story printed by the Daily Mirror about me conclusively prove Edwards received such information.

3. That both Morgan and Edwards committed perjury when questioned under oath about receiving information illegally from the police. I provided Operation Elveden with the relevant Leveson transcripts.

On 13 June 2013, you received the following response to those allegations from Detective Inspector Daniel Smith:

Dear Mr Henderson,

I write in relation to the allegations you made following your contact with DC Rooke in January of this year. I have reviewed the matters raised by you in this, and subsequent communications, with DC Rooke.

I understand that the matters raised by you relate to an article published in 1997 and that the matter was investigated by the Metropolitan Police Service (Complaints Investigation Bureau). The matter was referred to the Police Complaints Authority in 1999.

I understand that there is no new evidence or information available and as a result I have decided that no investigation will be conducted into the points raised by you.In relation to the Perjury allegation, having read the transcripts provided, I do not believe there is evidence that shows an offence has been committed. As a consequence this allegation will not be investigated.

Yours sincerely,

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith

You subsequently complained about this decision and as the Professional Standards Champion (PSC) with responsibility for Operation Elveden, I was asked to deal with that complaint. The legislation surrounding complaints against the police requires that the relevant force (referred to as the Appropriate Authority) considers the outcome of any complaint investigation. A PSC for a particular department is the senior officer that has been delegated by the Commissioner to act as the Appropriate Authority for that department.

I have now reviewed all the correspondence you have submitted, including the clarification of your complaint that you supplied to Chief Inspector Dunn, and the police records that relate to this matter. I am now in a position to inform you of the outcome of my enquiries. The police do not have to record or investigate an allegation of crime if there is evidence that no crime has taken place. The information you supplied to Operation Elveden was properly considered, as is evidenced by their correspondence with you in which they seek to clarify matters and identify any new evidence or information. The matter was then properly referred to one of the Detective Inspectors leading the operation to consider whether further investigation was required.

Detective Inspector Smith, as he explained in his e-mail to you, decided that the first two of your allegations had previously been recorded and investigated and as there was no new evidence or information, no further investigation was justified. He also reviewed your allegation of perjury and found that following initial investigation (a review of the relevant transcripts) there was evidence to indicate that in fact no crime had been committed. He therefore decided that this allegation did not need to be recorded or investigated. His actions and decisions comply with the Home Office National Crime Recording Standards and the MPS Crime Management Policy. These are decisions he had the authority to make and they were made through the appropriate process, in line with the relevant policy and guidance and were made after giving all the information due consideration.

As Appropriate Authority, I am required to consider the findings and conclusions of complaint investigations to determine:

whether the report should be referred to the Director of Prosecutions (CPS);

whether or not any person to whose conduct the investigation relates to has a case to answer in respect of misconduct, gross misconduct or no case to answer;

whether or not any such person’s performance is unsatisfactory;

what action, if any, we will take in respect of the matters dealt with in the report; and

what other action (if any) we will take in respect of these matters.

After considering these points I am satisfied the outcome does not need to be referred to the CPS.

I can also inform you that it has been determined there has not been a breach of the professional standards by any officer. Furthermore, I have conducted review of the officers’ performance, which I found to be satisfactory. This means that no further action will be taken in respect of your complaint.

In addition to the points above it has also been considered whether you received an appropriate level of service from the Metropolitan Police. This means how you were dealt with overall and not just by any one individual. After reviewing the circumstances of your complaint the Chief Inspector (CST) is satisfied there has not been a failure identified in the way we dealt with you. Your complaint is therefore not upheld.

We are grateful to you for raising this issue and giving us the opportunity to review the actions of those concerned. It is always useful to receive feedback on how our officers and staff perform; as an organisation it allows us to learn and develop and to identify ways we can improve our service in the future.

If you do not agree with the outcome of this investigation or its findings you can appeal to the Appeals Unit of the Directorate of Professional Standards. There is no right of appeal to the IPCC. You have 28 days from the day after the date of this letter to make your appeal. The 28th day is 07/04/2014. Appeals received after 28 days may not be allowed unless there are exceptional circumstances.

You can appeal on any one of the following grounds (you will see that not all of these necessarily apply to your case); that you:

have not been adequately informed about the findings of the investigation or any proposals resulting from the report;

disagree with the findings of the investigation including whether a person has a case to answer for misconduct or gross misconduct;

disagree with the police proposals for action – or lack of them – in light of the report;

disagree with the decision not to refer the report to the CPS.

If you do decide to appeal, this is the address to write to:

DPS Appeals Unit,

Metropolitan Police Service,

22nd Floor ESB,

Lillie Road,

London

SW6 1TR

Or by email to ‘Appeals@met.police.uk’

Further information about how to appeal can be found on the IPCC website:

4. That Det Supt Jeff Curtis committed misconduct in a public office and perverted the course of justice by claiming he had investigated my complaints against Morgan and Edwards when the reality was that he failed to conduct any investigation at all, and that despite having Morgan’s letter to the PCC and the Mirror article about me. Curtis eventually shamefacedly admitted to me in a phone call that he had not spoken to anyone at the Mirror including Morgan and Edwards and consequently there had been no investigation of the Mirror’s accounts and other records to see whether any money had been paid. Curtis failed to investigate Morgan and Edwards despite his promise to do so in an interview with me which I recorded. I have supplied Eleveden with a copy of that recording so you can hear him making the promise on which he reneged.

This amounts to a complaint about Detective Superintendent Jeff Curtis, who retired in 2003. This complaint appears to arise from events that occurred between 1997 and 1999, some 14 years ago. I also note that the PCA were involved and decided that no further investigation was required. There is a statutory time limit of 12 months in which a complaint can be made and as a result, unless you can provide reasonable grounds to account for this time delay, an application to “disapply” your complaint will be submitted. This means that although your complaint has been recorded, no further action will be taken.

If you disagree with this, you need to provide further information to show why your complaint is not out of time. You need to do this within 28 days from the day following the date of this letter. The 28th day is XX/XX/XX. Please provide your representations in writing to the postal or e-mail address shown above.

Any representations you make will be taken into account before a final decision is made as to whether your complaint will be investigated or not. If no representations are made or your representations are deemed to be insufficient, then your complaint will be disapplied.

If your complaint is disapplied then no further action will be taken with it. Further information about disapplications can be found on the IPCC website: www.ipcc.gov.uk

The full story is in the correspondence I reproduce below -. However, I realise that you are an immensely busy woman, so to take you to instantly to the heart of the corrupt behaviour of Operation Elveden please read first the attached facsimile letter Piers Morgan sent to the PCC whilst editor of the Daily Mirror. In this letter he admits receiving information from the Metropolitan Police in circumstances which can only be illegal, viz: “The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect)…”.

The other document you need to read is my initial email (dated 21 January 2013) to the then head of Operation Elveden Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh – see first document below this letter. That will give you the background to and the range of crimes Elveden are failing to investigate.

I have provided Eleveden with a copy of Morgan’s letter, together with other evidence of criminal behaviour on the part of the Mirror’s erstwhile Chief Crime Reporter Jeff Edwards, in receiving information illicitly from the police. I have also supplied Elveden with evidence that both Morgan and Edwards perjured themselves before the Leveson Inquiry. Finally, there is the misconduct of the police in not investigating these crimes for which they have cast-iron evidence.

Despite having the Piers Morgan letter (amongst other very strong evidence), DI Daniel Smith (see letter dated 13 June 2013) informed me that no investigation would be undertaken without giving any meaningful explanation.

The Metropolitan Police’s ’ Directorate of Professional Standards is now supposedly investigating the failure of Operation Elveden to investigate the crimes I have reported to them. However, they have had my complaint for more than seven months and have not come to a judgement.

As you will see from the correspondence, I have also tried without success to get the DPP to act on what is a clear failure on the part of the police to investigate serious crimes .. They have made the spurious excuse that they cannot direct the police to investigate a complaint. The excuse is spurious because in a recent case of rape they had done just that. That involved Acting Detective Constable Hannah Notley who wilfully mishandled the investigation. After a third party intervened with the CPS the matter was taken up by the police, viz: : “In April 2012, after an independent representative supporting the alleged victim contacted the CPS, Notley finally confessed, and last month admitted a single charge of misconduct in a public office.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10500744/Detective-jailed-after-failing-to-investigate-alleged-rape.html).

Since I made my complaint to Eleveden I have not been interviewed by any person from Elveden, the DPS or the CPS, this despite my frequent requests to be interviewed and to give a formal statement. This is a very strong indication that all of those in the police and justice systems who have been involved with the matter know very well that my complaints are exceptionally well founded. They will not meet me because they do not know how to tell me to my face that black is white.

I ask you to take up this matter and to use your influence to get my allegations of criminality investigated thoroughly. I would greatly welcome a meeting with you to discuss the matter.

If the police are not brought to book over this, it will mean they are a law unto themselves.

DCI Neligan’s email to me bears all the hallmarks of having been cobbled together in a tremendous rush, resting as it does very heavily on cut and pasting from the previous correspondence arising from this case and the reiteration of spurious reasons why no investigation is to be made. He rejects my complaints by ignoring the conclusive evidence of both the initial offences of which I complained and my further complaints about the behaviour of Operation Elveden officers who have failed to investigate the clearest of evidence of serious crimes.

On my complaints about Morgan and Edwards receiving information illegally from the Met , DCI Nelligan simply ignores the damming evidence I have supplied, most notably the letter from Morgan to the PCC in which he admits to receiving to receiving information from a Met officer in circumstances which can only have been illegal. With my accusations of perjury by Morgan and Edwards, he unquestioningly accepts Detective Inspector Daniel Smith’s opinion that perjury had not been committed despite the fact that DI Smith provided no meaningful explanation of why he had come to that conclusion. The transcript of the Leveson hearings which I gave to Elveden points very strongly to perjury.

As for D-Supt Jeff Curtis, the fact that he did not interview Morgan, Edwards or anyone else at the Mirror is conclusive evidence of a wilful and criminal failure to investigate. The failure of the then Police Complaints Authority to Act when I complained of Curtis’ failure is clear evidence of a wilful and criminal failure to address my complaint honestly. The refusal of Operation Elveden to start an investigation of D-Supt Curtis when faced with such strong evidence of criminality as the Morgan letter and a tape recording of Curtis promising me that he would interview Morgan is clear evidence of a wilful and criminal failure to act on clear evidence of criminality on Curtis’ part. The failure of the DPP to act on the spurious ground that they cannot direct the police to investigate is clear evidence of a wilful and criminal desire to stop this matter becoming public knowledge.

In short, all DCI Nelligan has done is accept unquestioningly what previous officers and authorities have claimed was the case. He has made no attempt to assess the evidence I have provided.

This scandal comes down in the end to the age old question of who shall guard the guards? At every stage of the complaints I have submitted there has been a wilful determination by those within the police and justice system to ignore evidence which on its own is enough to bring charges. Right from the time I made the initial complaint to the Metropolitan Police (which was eventually dealt with by Jeff Edwards) there has been a failure to investigate not because of an absence of evidence but because of the strength of the evidence and the people involved.

I could get nothing done while Labour was in power because the story behind Morgan’s letter and the Mirror article which led to Morgan writing the letter to the PCC leads ultimately to Tony and Cherie Blair. The Blairs attempted to have me prosecuted on charges , which as lawyers they must have known were bogus, during the 1997 General Election. Having failed ignominiously (the CPS returned the papers marked “No Crime” within hours of receiving them) the Blairs set Special Branch and MI5 on to me (the Mirror article about me fingered Special Branch and using the Data Protection Act – DPA – I subsequently proved that both they and MI5 have files on me). I then suffered ten years of harassment which ranged from death threats to a persistent ostentatious opening of my post. The harassment ceased as soon as Blair left office.

Sounds fantastic? Well, this should dissolve your scepticism. The Conservative MP Sir Richard Body put down this Early Day Motion of my behalf:

CONDUCT OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MEMBER FOR SEDGEFIELD 10:11:99

Sir Richard Body

That this House regrets that the Right honourable Member for Sedgefield [Tony Blair] attempted to persuade the Metropolitan Police to bring criminal charges against Robert Henderson, concerning the Right honourable Member’s complaints to the police of an offence against the person, malicious letters and racial insult arising from letters Robert Henderson had written to the Right honourable Member complaining about various instances of publicly-reported racism involving the Labour Party; and that, after the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaints of the Right honourable Member and the Right honourable Member failed to take any civil action against Robert Henderson, Special Branch were employed to spy upon Robert Henderson, notwithstanding that Robert Henderson had been officially cleared of any illegal action.

Any prosecution of Morgan and Edwards when I made the original complaint would have caused serious problems for the Blairs. That explains why I could not get the police to act then. The police will not act now, doubtless partly still because of the Blairs’ involvement and that of other powerful people who have come into the story over the course of the past 17 years , but also because of the failure of senior police officers who have comprehensively failed to do their duty.

Please reflect upon this. If you do not act and I get story into the public fold you will have become part of the corrupt behaviour which has been the dominant and persistent feature of this case. Ask yourself how you would stand before the media and explain with a straight face why no investigation was made when the police have the Morgan letter to the PCC.

Is it likely I will get the story out? Well, Piers Morgan lost his CNN job four days after I circulated. to the mainstream media in Britain and the USA his letter to the PCC in facsimile with a covering note – a copy of that email is below DCI Nelligan’s email. I do not like coincidences at the best of times and in particular I do not take to them when the coincidence involves, as this does, a complicated sequence of events to occur if it was just a coincidence.

I call upon you again to act directly as the police are unambiguously refusing to act not because they do not have evidence but because the evidence is hideously dangerous to them.

If it is not simply a coincidence , it could be that CNN are simply putting Morgan out to grass for a spell to see if the police investigate him. If so, he should be given another CNN vehicle within the next year if he does not face criminal charges..

The cancelling of his programme is more plausibly down to my circulation of his PCC letter to the media than his questioning about phone hacking by police in December, for which he was neither arrested nor charged. The time delay between December and now make also it improbable that his show was cancelled because of his December questioning. It is just possible that Morgan is about to be charged in relation to phone-hacking and that has promoted the CNN action

Over the past two days I have sent the following to some 200 individual mediafolk and media outlets. The email addresses are at the bottom of the email – these are all emails which did not produce a bounce so you should be able to use them if you wish to.

———————————————————————————————————————————–

My name is Robert Henderson. Over a year ago I supplied the Metropolitan police with unequivocal evidence that Piers Morgan when Daily Mirror editor received information from one or more of their officers in circumstances which can only have been illegal. That evidence is in a letter from Morgan to the Press complaints Commission in which he writes”The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect)”. The letter is in text form below and in facsimile form in the attached file Morganletterscan.docx . Please ask Hogan-Howe why this is not being investigated.

The accusations of criminal behaviour made against me by Morgan in the letter are a tissue of lies. The reality of my dealings with the Blairs is neatly précised in an Early Day Motion put down by Sir Richard Body:

10 November 1999

CONDUCT OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MEMBER FOR SEDGEFIELD 10:11:99

Sir Richard Body

That this House regrets that the Right honourable Member for Sedgefield [Tony Blair] attempted to persuade the Metropolitan Police to bring criminal charges against Robert Henderson, concerning the Right honourable Member’s complaints to the police of an offence against the person, malicious letters and racial insult arising from letters Robert Henderson had written to the Right honourable Member complaining about various instances of publicly-reported racism involving the Labour Party; and that, after the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaints of the Right honourable Member and the Right honourable Member failed to take any civil action against Robert Henderson, Special Branch were employed to spy upon Robert Henderson, notwithstanding that Robert Henderson had been officially cleared of any illegal action.

I refer to Mr Henderson’s complaint as outlined in his letter of 23 September.

As you are aware, we have been in contact with Mr Henderson for some time due to his propensity to bombard individuals and this office with correspondence. There are certain irrefutable facts that escape emphasis in Mr Henderson’s correspondence.

Far from ignoring any of his correspondence we have written to him on the 20 May, 22 July and 6 August We have consistently made it clear that we have no intention of entering into any further correspondence with him.

Be that as it may I will address his concerns:-

In essence, the basic “sting” of the article, of which he complains, was that he had been sending numerous insulting letters, some with racist undertones, to Mr and Mrs Blair which had been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration.

Mr Henderson himself admits that he sent Mr and Mrs Blair at least thirteen letters. I have no way of directly knowing of the content of those letters because I have not had sight of them. However, clearly they sufficiently concerned Mr Blair’s office to be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service and I think the Commission is perfectly entitled to draw an adverse inference on the contents of those letters as a result of that referral.

In Mr Henderson’s draft article “Moral Simpletons Target Innocent Man” the bile that he shows on the second page of that article clearly illustrates his capacity to insult in his letters to Mr and Mrs Blair (to the extent that they be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service). I would also refer the Commission to Mr Henderson’s gratuitous reference to a “Blaireich”.

He also admits to expressing his disgust (we can only guess in what terms) of the decision of Mr and Mrs Blair not to send their son to a school whereby a white schoolboy was, apparently, murdered by five other boys (and that that murder was racially motivated).

The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect) gave us the detail of the letters that we then published. Nothing that Mr Henderson writes has convinced me that the article was anything other than accurate.

Perhaps one can get a flavour of his correspondence with Mr and Mrs Blair by examining the final sentence of his draft article in which he states “It was a cargo of ancient male gonads”.

The Commission may be aware (I am attempting to get hold of the article) that the article of Mr Henderson’s that appeared in Wisden’s Cricket Monthly in 1995 gave rise to an extraordinary amount of controversy and resulted in Wisden paying substantial libel damages to the Cricketer, Devon Malcolm, whom the Commission will be aware is a coloured fast bowler for England. As I understand the matter, and Mr Henderson will correct me if I am wrong, the article implied that coloured players will not try as hard when playing for England as white players.

I have discussed the legal position with the newspaper’s solicitor, Martin Cruddace , and he has assured me that the law has recently developed whereby words (be they written or spoken) can constitute assault if the pattern of those words is such as to make the recipient of them either anxious or ill. It has developed as a reaction to the former impotence of the law on stalking.

The law has therefore developed since the publication of the dictionary reference on which Mr Henderson relies.

I cannot accept that the taking of the photographs of Mr Henderson, given the clear public interest concerning the subject matter of The Mirror article, could possibly constitute harassment under the Code.

I am most concerned not to waste any further time in dealing with Mr Henderson’s complaint but, naturally, if the Commission wishes me to address any further matters then I will endeavour to do so.

However, I hope that the above is sufficient to convince the Commission that the basic “sting” of the article is accurate and that Mr Henderson’s complaint ought to be dismissed.

In your role of Chief Crown Prosecutor (London) I have been copying you into the correspondence relating to my complaints against Piers Morgan and others which I made to Operation Elveden in January 2013. I now write to you in your new role of DPP.

To recap. I have presented Elveden with a prosecution on a plate. I have supplied Elveden with a letter from Morgan to the PCC when he was editor of the Daily Mirror. In it he admits receiving information from the Met Police in circumstances which can only have been illegal. In that letter Morgan writes “The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect…”. A facsimile of the letter is attached. I would be willing to stake my life on that being the only letter the Met have ever had which has a Fleet Street editor admitting to illegally receiving information from a Met officer.

My complaint has been in the hands of Elveden for over nine months, while Det Chief Superintendent Bonthron has been sitting on the complaint for several months. I have not heard from him since 23 September.

I am asking you to intervene because we are in who shall guard the guards territory here. The police are ignoring cast iron complaints and their only plausible motive for doing so is the power and influence of those accused. I would welcome a meeting with you to discuss the matter.

The complete correspondence relating to my complaints is below.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

I received no reply to this email

————————————————————————————————————

Ms Alison Saunders DPP

Rose Court

2 Southwark Bridge

London

SE1 9HS

Tel: 020 3357 0000

CC

Mr Dominic Grieve (Attorney-General)

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Met Commissioner)

Det Chief Superintendent Alaric Bonthron

(Head of the Metropolitan Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards)

Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden)

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden)

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

Sir Gerald Howarth MP

mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

9 December 2013

Dear Ms Saunders,

I wrote to your predecessor Keir Starmer on 25 July (copy below) asking him to intervene in Operation Elveden’s failure to investigate rock solid evidence which I had supplied to them in January of serious crimes ranging from the illegal supply of information by a Met Police officer or officers to the Daily Mirror when Piers Morgan was editor to perjury, misconduct in a public office and a perversion of the course of justice.

On 16 August Gregor McGill, Head of Organised Crime Division of the CPS replied “ The CPS has no power to instruct the police to carry out an investigation. That is a decision entirely within the discretion of the police.” A copy of his letter is below.

I did not believe that answer at the time and a case has arisen which contradicts Mr McGill. In December Acting Detective Constable Hannah Notley was convicted and jailed for four months for failing to investigate a claim of rape. Action was only pursued by the police after a third party (not the police) approached the CPS directly. The Daily telegraph article directly below contains the details.

My complaints against Piers Morgan et al have suffered the same fate. I have submitted cast iron evidence to Operation Elveden which has not been acted upon. Consequently, once again I ask you to take up this case and ensure that my complaints of serious crimes are investigated fully. I also seek a meeting with you to discuss the matter because it has implications which extend beyond my complaints, namely, the seeming willingness of those within the police and justice system , including the CPS, to deliberately suppress complaints which involve those with power, wealth and influence.

I have been copying you into the complete correspondence surrounding the case , both in your previous role as Chief Crown Prosecutor (London) and as DPP. Hence, you should have the full picture available to you. If for some reason you have not kept details, please tell me by return and I will supply you with the complete correspondence relating to the affair.

I have attached the Piers Morgan letter in facsimile in which he admits receiving information from a Metropolitan Police Officer in circumstances which can only have been illegal. I do this because it is the most dramatic and readily accessible piece of evidence in the whole affairs. That Operation Elveden have not acted on such clear evidence long ago tells you something is seriously amiss.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

Daily Telegraph

Detective jailed after failing to investigate alleged rape

Acting Detective Constable Hannah Notley never submitted papers on the case to the Crown Prosecution Service

By Rosa Silverman, and agencies

2:32PM GMT 06 Dec 2013

An alleged rape victim attempted suicide after a detective failed to properly investigate her claims and told her the case was being dropped, a court has heard.

Acting Detective Constable Hannah Notley, 30, visited the woman at her home in February last year and told her she was “gutted” about the apparent decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to bring a prosecution.

Everyone in the office believed her, she said, and even gave the woman a kiss and a hug.

But in fact Notley, a specialist trained in handling cases involving sexual offences, had never submitted the papers on the case to the CPS.

Instead, she fabricated a report to her superiors and failed to correct an assumption that the case had been investigated and passed on to prosecutors.

She also blamed the alleged victim for taking too long to report the allegations.

In April 2012, after an independent representative supporting the alleged victim contacted the CPS, Notley finally confessed, and last month admitted a single charge of misconduct in a public office.

The Essex Police detective was found to have committed a “gross breach of trust” in neglecting to look into the rape claim between July 6, 2011 and February 21 last year while based at Rayleigh Police Station.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is responsible for reviewing and, where appropriate, prosecuting most criminal cases in England and Wales , following an investigation by the police. The CPS has no power to investigate allegations of crime and will only advise the police if a police file is submitted to it. It is for the police to decide whether or not, or how, they will investigate an allegation that is referred to them.

I note your dissatisfaction with the way the police have handled your concerns. If you wish to complain about the police you should contact the complaints and discipline department of the relevant police force. You can also write to the Independent Police Complaints Commission at 90 High Holborn, London , WC1V 6BH .

I hope that this information is of assistance and I apologise for the delay in responding to your enquiry.

(Head of the Metropolitan Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards)

Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden)

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden)

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

Sir Gerald Howarth MP

mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

17 December 2013

Dear Ms Saunders,

You will find below the CPS’ answer to my email to you of 9 December (not 5 December). The first thing to note is it has no name attached. That would not be acceptable in any state agency. It is particularly reprehensible in one which is at the heart of the justice system.

The second angering thing about the email is this:

”The CPS has no power to investigate allegations of crime and will only advise the police if a police file is submitted to it. It is for the police to decide whether or not, or how, they will investigate an allegation that is referred to them.”

As I supplied a recent example where the CPS did intervene after being approached by a third party following the failure to bring a charge of rape, the claim that the CPS cannot instruct the police is demonstrably false. This is what I wrote in my previous email:

I want you (yes, that you Ms Saunders) to explain to me why so blatant a piece of police misconduct as the failure to investigate Piers Morgan after I supplied the police with a letter written by Morgan in which he admits receiving information from the police in circumstances which can only have been illegal does not warrant the same action by the CPS as that taken in the case involving Hannah Notley. Please write to me with your explanation by return.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

——————————————————————————————————-

Click on the tag Operation Elveden for previous posts related to this story

Note:I have had some dealings with Norman Baker regarding both the Blairs’ attempts to prosecute me and its aftermath and the David Kelly death. Robert Henderson

Mr Norman Baker MP

House of Commons

London SW1A 0AA

9 October 2013

Dear Mr Baker,

Congratulations on your promotion to the Home Office.

I have a scandal which comes within your new remit. In January this year I supplied Operation Elveden with a letter sent by Piers Morgan to the PCC when he was editor of the Daily Mirror. A copy of that letter is attached in facsimile.

In the letter Morgan writes “The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect”. That can only mean the information was given illegally. Moreover, the information which the Mirror received was of a nature which could not have been legally given to a newspaper. The information concerned me.

Operation Elveden refused to investigate – It took them around five months to tell me they were not going to act. During that time I made repeated requests to be interviewed and give a formal statement, but these requests were ignored.

I then wrote to the DPP asking him to intervene. I received no overt encouragement from him, but something may have happened behind the scenes because Elveden emailed me to say the matter had been referred to the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards . That was nearly two months ago. The matter is being dealt with by the head of the Directorate, Det Chief Supt Alaric Bonthron. I have made several requests for him to meet me but he has simply ignored them.

As a subsidiary scandal, I give you this. I supplied to the Leveson Inquiry a copy of the Morgan letter along with a good deal of other material relating to press abuse . Leveson refused to allow me to be a core participant, refused to call me as a witness, failed to use the letter as evidence against Morgan when he was giving evidence under oath and was so desperate to write me out of the script that he excluded me from the list of people who had made submissions to the Inquiry.

I would greatly value a meeting with you to discuss this matter. I realise that you will be immensely busy as a minister , but this is a matter which falls absolutely within the Home Office remit. Moreover, it goes to the heart of our justice system because this is who shall guard the guards territory. The police are in effect perverting the course of justice by refusing to act on the clearest evidence of a serious crime having been committed.

There is a good deal of correspondence below this email, but please do not be daunted by that. I suggest that you concentrate for the moment on the Morgan letter and, if you are willing to meet me, I will run you through the story then.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

Click on the tags Operation Elveden and Leveson Inquiry for the full story of those issues. Click on the category The Scandalous Blairs for that story.

You will find below my complete correspondence with Operation Elveden and the CPS. The correspondence with Elevden comes before the CPS. You will also see I have just written to the attorney-general.

If Elveden have not passed their complete file on my complaint to you, the only thing you may now be missing is the recording of my meeting with Det Supt Jeff Curtis at which he promised to interview Piers Morgan and Jeff Edwards. This he then failed to do despite having a copy of a letter from Morgan to the PCC supplied by me in which Morgan admitted receiving information from the Met Police in circumstances which can only have been illegal . A facsimile of this letter is attached.

Operation Elveden have had my complaint and evidence since the end of January. That is an unconscionable delay in investigating Morgan, Edwards, and Curtis. The wilful ignoring of such clear evidence as I have provided amounts to misconduct in a public office and/or an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Frankly, I find it very odd that you have not contacted me before now to arrange an interview. I wish to meet you to discuss this matter as soon as possible. Please arrange to meet me ASAP.

Thank you for the email below. I would like to point out we are currently reviewing the previous matters dealt with by D.Supt Curtis which you had sent to the MPS. This review is in hand and you will be updated in due course.

Your email of 23 September continues the behaviour I have experienced at the hands of Operation Elveden. I have asked you to meet me and you have simply ignored the request. Frankly, that does not inspire confidence in me that you will deal with this matter honestly. It also builds on my rational mistrust of the Met Police which has developed through my experience of the force over the past sixteen years.

It is not that think the police are generally corrupt, but rather that there are two circumstances in which the will almost invariably act dishonestly. The first is where their own misbehaviour places them in danger, for example, selling information to the media; the second is where those with power and influence are the subject of allegations of criminality. Both circumstances apply with knobs on in my case.

Since March 1997, when the Blairs attempted and failed humiliatingly to have me prosecuted on bogus charges, I have been given ample reason for doubting the honesty of the Met. My experience with the Blairs is neatly summarised in this Early Day Motion put down by Sir Richard Body:

CONDUCT OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MEMBER FOR SEDGEFIELD 10:11:99

Sir Richard Body

That this House regrets that the Right honourable Member for Sedgefield [Tony Blair] attempted to persuade the Metropolitan Police to bring criminal charges against Robert Henderson, concerning the Right honourable Member’s complaints to the police of an offence against the person, malicious letters and racial insult arising from letters Robert Henderson had written to the Right honourable Member complaining about various instances of publicly-reported racism involving the Labour Party; and that, after the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaints of the Right honourable Member and the Right honourable Member failed to take any civil action against Robert Henderson, Special Branch were employed to spy upon Robert Henderson, notwithstanding that Robert Henderson had been officially cleared of any illegal action.

The police refused to meaningfully investigate any of my complaints against the Blairs and the Mirror. I also suffered harassment throughout Blair’s premiership, behaviour which abruptly stopped when he left office. The harassment went from ostentatiously opening my post to vicious incitements in chat rooms to attack me to death threats. During that time I was unable to get the police to meaningfully investigate any of my complaints about the harassment.

I think that should be enough to put you in the picture. Do not read into it that I am not prepared to give you a fair chance to play the honest man. Play square with me and you will have clean moral hands in this matter as far as I am concerned. But if you attempt to shrug off my complaints you will become part of the scandal. Ask yourself this simple question Mr Bonthron; would you be happy standing in a witness box or before TV cameras trying to explain why a letter from a Fleet Street editor admitting receiving information from the Met Police in circumstances which can only have been illegal is not grounds to investigate that editor?

I ask again that you to arrange a meeting with me ASAP. If you are unwilling to meet me, please say so and explain your reasons.

Thank you for your further email. I explained in the first I would be having the matters raised in your original messages to the Elveden team reviewed then would get back to you. This has not changed and I will be in contact in due course.

Thank you for your further email. I explained in the first I would be having the matters raised in your original messages to the Elveden team reviewed then would get back to you. This has not changed and I will be in contact in due course.

I refer to your email of 2 October. Yet again you have ignored my request for a meeting with you. I am not going to get into a perpetual exchange of emails making the request and you ignoring it, so this will be the last time I make the request. Are you willing to meet me and if not why not?

You may think that this extremely toxic (for the Met and you) problem will simply go away if you ignore it. The question you should be considering is what if it does not go away, what if the media censorship is broken? How would you explain your behaviour if you were in a witness box or in front of TV cameras? I can just envisage it: “Mr Bonthron, are you seriously suggesting that the possession of a letter from a Fleet Street editor admitting he received information illegally from the Met Police does not constitute grounds for investigation?

Think about it.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

———————————————————————————————–

I sent my email to the attorney-general in the evening of the 18th Sept and got messages back from DI Smith giving me the contact details for the Directorate of professional Standards, something he had failed to do for two weeks following my request I also received an email immediately from the staff officer serving the head of Operation Elveden . This was the first time I have had any response from Basu’s office.

Bonthron is the head of the Directorate of Professional Standards and the fact that someone so senior is dealing with the matter is indicative of the concern my complaints are causing. The involvement of police officers of far too high a rank to investigate the type of complaints I have made is a common thread throughout my dealings with the police since the Blairs tried and failed miserably to have me prosecuted. Since 1997 I have had these senior coppers dealing with my complaints:

I am writing to acknowledge receipt of this e-mail and a second of the same date which is timed at 20:32hrs.

You have hopefully already received Commander Basu’s out of office notification and are therefore aware that he will be unable to respond to you personally in a timely way. I have therefore passed your messages to Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS) Gordon Briggs who is the officer overseeing the Elvedon, Weeting and Tuleta investigations. DCS Briggs will make contact to provide a response within 7 days.

Operation Elveden are failing to investigate serious crimes committed by the Daily Mirror for which they have cast iron evidence.

The full story is in the correspondence I reproduce below. (The correspondence is divided into two sections – that with Elevden and that with the CPS). However, I realise that you are an immensely busy man, so to take you to instantly to the heart of the corrupt behaviour of Operation Elveden please read first the attached facsimile letter Piers Morgan sent to the PCC whilst editor of the Daily Mirror. In this letter he admits receiving information from the Metropolitan Police in circumstances which can only be illegal, viz: “The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect)…”.

The other document you need to read is my initial email (dated 21 January 2013) to the then head of Operation Elveden Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh – see first document below this letter. That will give you the background to and the range of crimes Elveden are failing to investigate.

I have provided Eleveden with a copy of Morgan’s letter, together with other evidence of criminal behaviour on the part of the Mirror’s erstwhile Chief Crime Reporter Jeff Edwards, in receiving information illicitly from the police. I have also supplied Elveden with evidence that both Morgan and Edwards perjured themselves before the Leveson Inquiry. Finally, there is the misconduct of the police in not investigating these crimes for which they have cast-iron evidence.

The behaviour of Operation Elveden has been extraordinary. They have ignored my repeated requests to be interviewed and provide a formal statement. Astonishingly my only contact with them has been through written correspondence.

Despite having the Piers Morgan letter (amongst other very strong evidence), DI Daniel Smith (see letter dated 13 June 2013) informed me that no investigation would be undertaken without giving any meaningful explanation.

The Metropolitan Police’s ’ Department for Professional Standards is supposedly investigating the failure of Operation Elveden to investigate the crimes I have reported to them. However, no one from that department has contacted me. In addition, Elveden have failed to answer my request that they give me the contact details and names of those conducting the investigation (see my email to DI Daniel Smith dated 6 Sept 2013).

As you will see from the correspondence, I have also tried without success to get the DPP to act on what is a clear failure on the part of the police to investigate serious crimes . That is the reason I now write to you. I realise that the police are meant to be independent of the DPP and the DDP is meant to be independent of the law officers. However, this is a wholly exceptional circumstance because we are clearly deep into who shall guard the guards territory, with the police blatantly failing to do their duty to investigate very clear and serious crimes. If the police are not brought to book over this, it means they are a law unto themselves.

I ask you to take up this matter and to use your influence to get my allegations of criminality investigated thoroughly. I would greatly welcome a meeting with you to discuss the matter.